I’m sorry. “as a college student”, “72 yrs ago”. You guys really need to cap the age at which a person is allowed to make decisions that impact the lives of millions of people. Jeez, at least make cognitive testing mandatory.
Chuck Grassley is 92 years old.
He was college age from 1951-ish to 1954-ish.
Gas prices were $0.27 to $0.29 a gallon back then.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-741-august-20-2012-historical-gasoline-prices-1929-2011
Adjusted for inflation, that’s $3.37 to $3.49 today…
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
Buuuuut… Another way of looking at it…
The minimum wage in the early 1950s was $0.75/hr.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart
So a gallon of gas was between 36% and 39% of an hours worth of minimum wage work.
The current minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. A gallon of gas at the current average of $2.847 is 39% of an hours worth of minimum wage work.
Well … fuck, I just got done grabbing the BLS inflation calculation for .25 from 1973 and that’s $3.05 today but your post is just already here making me feel silly for even thinking about commenting.
Cool stats though, it’s interesting to see how the cost has more or less stayed in line with inflation. I think that’s what you’d expect to see with most commodities from that time to now, but I’m also an idiot who got like a C in my macroeconomics class so I don’t really know.
… if only the most expensive things stayed the same ratio - like mortgage/rent, health insurance, retirement, college. Minimum wage is $7.25, rent costs $1.5k. Got an A in macro, but only a B in micro. I wonder what happened…
Yeah it’s wild how fucked our economy is.
The divorce of worker productivity from worker pay leading to the huge wealth gap we see today is really bad for everyone but the 1%.
Those things have gotten more expensive and I don’t want to sound like I’m arguing just want to say that’s always been a problem with calculating inflation. Like I read about Jesus being betrayed for six preices of silver or something and that far back it’s really hard to say how much that’s “worth” comparable to today.
But I never been to one of those fancy adult schools “snaps suspenders” so what do I know.
Actually kinda cool stats.
He’s a really fucking old ass dude. When he was 20 years old gas was around $3.05 a gallon if you adjust for inflation. It’s $4.50 near me right now.
But hey, let’s talk about wages and electricity costs. Let’s chat about rent and the cost of a house these days. Let’s see what the cost of goods and groceries is doing. Most of us need computers, so let’s talk about RAM and SSD costs under this regime that just dereguated AI and is nullifying state AI laws.
It’s all worse.
Edit: let’s just do the first two.
- prices for electricity are 938.39% higher in 2025 versus 1953
- prices for rent of primary residence are 1,177.60% higher in 2025 versus 1953
Even if his math is correct, it’s a stupid point cause our incomes haven’t matched inflation and that’s all that really matters.
Our incomes should have matched productivity to get ahead. Matching inflation is just treading water.
We drowning
This is a great talking point and I’m stealing it
Not to mention that gas is a larger part of the average persons budget than it was 72 years ago. We live in a car distopia without any good public transit. It’s also why looking at a single thing like gas prices is a dumb way to judge how affordable living is.
We live in a car distopia[sic] without any good public transit.
Are you based in America?
Yes. And the context of this post is talking about America.
Alright, just checking. 🤷♂️
You don’t even need to bring income into it. Inflation is the whole point of the “things were cheaper in the old days” trope, if you adjust for inflation then all you’re saying is we’ve seen zero progress. Even on its own terms it’s still not a brag.
True, especially because isn’t gas prices one of the things that define inflation so doing that calculation doesn’t really mean anything? Also so many fewer people were driving in those days.
Mf is really over 90 y.o. I had to check his wikipedia page 😱
Why the fuck is a 92 year old man still actively holding office?
And what insane political system would allow this to happen?
This is elder abuse!
You mean the elderly is abusing us, I totally agree
In this case both works.
This guy doesn’t get to enjoy his pension, while younger generations has to wait longer to get actual representation of their views among serving politicians.
Except, as far as we know, nobody is forcing him to be there. He could just resign today if he wanted to.
That’s because our taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize this obsolete form of energy. We should be focusing on energy of the future instead of energy of the past.
“the government shouldn’t be giving people things” is the dumb argument I hear so often.
Every gallon of gas, pound of beef, gallon of milk, and such have been subsidized by the government. They just ignore/don’t realize it.
It’s not that I’m opposed to all forms of giving people things. It’s just that I would rather we help give people good things like solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, free or low cost bus fair. Things that will move our country forward instead of backwards.
“And we got free lead in it too!”
What if he can math but knows his constituents can’t or won’t.
Meanwhile everything else is much more expensive today.
Gas could double in price and it would still be the least of my concerns.
If my napkin math is right*, he was in college between 1951 and 1956; with gas ranging from .24 to .27 dollars a gallon.
Adjusting for inflation that’s be about $2.40.
Sunday I paid 2.90 at Costco. It seems he’s full of shit.
(My napkin math is notorious for breaking the laws of physics. Best do your own… or else we might end up dividing by zero.)
For some bizarre reason I was able to get gas at $2.05 on Monday.
The next day it was back to $2.92.
Must have been a weird price war between a handful of stations that day.
Or someone messed up programming the machine.
But still, that’s a score.
I checked around and about half the gas stations in the area were around $2.05 and half were around $2.90.
It’s possible one was accidentally set and a bunch of other gas stations price matched (possibly automatically?)
or it was cut with water
I’ve noticed that a common sign of dementia is thinking gas costs what it did decades ago. My step dad would be sent in to pay for gas and he’d come back thinking $10 was more than enough to fill the tank. This was when gas was $4+ a gallon.
Chuck’s math is 25¢ a gallon. As you point out that is right about the price it was when he was in his prime. His post isn’t just about lying for Trump. It’s about mental decline.
You may be asking why my step dad with dementia was being sent in unattended to pay for gas when you could pay at the pump. Denial by his primary caregiver was also a factor. Make him do as many normal things as possible and then be shocked when they didn’t work out.
Gas price ranges are huge by what area you’re in. You may have paid $2.90, but I paid $2.15. there’s a few areas in other states that I know are under $2.00. California probably mostly over $3.00.
It was 1953 @ $0.25/gal. The CPI puts that at $3.00 in 2025 dollars. So literally the exact price.
… now taking into account purchasing power, since earnings did not keep up with inflation he was still much better than us.
But his math is correct?
¢25 in 1953, 72 years ago, is $3.03 when adjusted for inflation according to US Inflation Calculator.
And the current gas price is $2.4 per gallon in Iowa where he is from. (Not sure where he went to college but whatever.)
It’s ¢60 cheaper per gallon now, when adjusted for inflation.
If he’s right about the price he paid, he’s also right about it being cheaper now.
Surely Trump didn’t help during all these 72 years but the math is correct, even if the logic is flawed.
It sure as hell ain’t $2.4 a gallon here.
Welp, you gotta compare apples to apples.
I added the detail about the gas price in Iowa, where this senator is from. Not sure if he went to college there but meh.
Thanks for the clarification
No problem buddy!
Yeah gas is weird because our subsidization and conflicts we create everywhere for it. For instance gas was at 3.25 in 2008 and 2.14 in 2016. It isn’t as simple as saying Obama did such a great job gas fell by 58% during that time (adjusted for inflation, though I think I just did Jan 1, so that’s not entirely accurate, but we get the point)
I can imagine the gas price is a very complex and complicated beast, indeed. 😵💫
Now do minimum wage
Surprisingly it come out more or less equivalent, around 39% of an hour at minimum wage
Great! Now do rent.
That’s much worse, in Iowa, average real cost has about doubled since 1953
Year Current Dollars Constant 2020 Dollars
2025 $1,027 $808
2024 $981 $807
2023 $943 $801
2022 $860 $761
2020 $808 $808
2000 $470 $724
1990 $336 $661
1980 $226 $688
1970 $99 $585
1960 $68 $516
1950 $43 $397
1940 $23 $370
The goalpost have now passed Voyager and is the man made object farthest from earth.
Yeah I wonder how we got the gas to stay that cheap. I wouldn’t worry about it.
If elected, I’ll make gas even more expensive, and spend the tax revenue on bus/train infrastructure.
Shut up and take my vote!
Guys, why aren’t you giving Trump credit for 72 years of progress in petroleum engineering and decades of wars for oil?
